On Saturday May 4th, 2019, Saskatchewan Agriculture In The Classroom held their annual Cooking Up Saskatchewan Competition(CUSK) in Saskatoon. Sacred Heart High School senior cooking students Jeanne Almonia and Hailey Dooley, along with their commercial cooking teacher Mrs. AnnaLee Parnetta travelled to Saskatoon to compete in this annual one day event. This event is sponsored by Agriculture in the Classroom and the Chicken Farmers of Saskatchewan. The purpose of this event is to highlight Saskatchewan chicken and create an awareness of farm to fork connections for students and showcase culinary and presentation skills. Schools from across Saskatchewan are invited to enter a team of 2 to 5 students who are students of Commercial Cooking 10/20/30 or Food studies 10/30. The team is required to create an entrée of soup, salad or appetizer and a main course entre using chicken. The team is also required to set a table and then present their dishes to two judges. This years judges were a head chef from Saskatoon Polytechinical Institute’s culinary program and a director and chicken farmer from Saskatchewan Chicken Producers Board of Directors. The students were marked on their safety and appearance in the kitchen as they worked including things like knife handing techniques and food safety control. Their dishes were marked on presentation, taste and texture. The SHHS presented an appetizer of Chicken Avocado Fresh Spring rolls and the main course entrée was Chicken Thai Inasal with Jave rice. The main students are allowed to use recipes from any source but if recipes are taken from a cookbook or website they are required to change a minimum of three ingredients or methods in order to make it their own recipe. The main course dish was an original creation of Jeanne Almonia and it received high praise for the taste, flavours and properly cooked through methods used during the preparation. Hailey prepared the Fresh rolls and received compliments on the combination of vegetables used in the roll along with a clean and creative plating presentation. Along with food preparation all teams are required to do a 3 to 5 minute presentation on chicken, its healthy benefits, the care of animals on the farm and why one should choose to use Saskatchewan chicken.
The top three teams of the seven participating teams were: Frist place: Team Sacred Heart from Yorkton, Second place: Team Riffel High School from Regina and Third Place: Team Hafford School from Hafford. The top three teams received a cash prizes for their hard work. This is the first year that Sacred Heart has attended this event and they look forward to returning next year.
